Quality and Food Safety Audits

Quality Auditing
To ensure conformity with Company requirements and effectiveness of our Quality Systems, periodic audits and systematic reviews are undertaken. As well as the twice-yearly independent audits carried out by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance (LRQA), which incorporates ISO 9001/2000 and B.R.C., fully trained internal auditors also carry out compliance or improvements audits on system procedures. To enable us to do this, a minimum of 10% of the permanent employees at the manufacturing sites are trained auditors.

The focus is always on prevention, improvement and corrective action rather than checking the system.

Customer Audits
British Sugar welcomes manufacturing site visits by customers wishing to carry out a supplier appraisal or review, either as part of their own quality management programme or for their due diligence assurance under the Food Safety Act.

The ideal time to visit a sugar factory is during the "Campaign" when the sugar beet is actually being processed. This is typically between September and February. Visiting at this time of the year provides the opportunity to review our process from reception of beet through the entire process to the packing and finished product areas.

A full audit of the whole process will entail an extensive tour of the factory both internally and externally. We provide visitors with appropriate protective clothing such as coats, hats, hairnets and safety glasses. We recommend that customers provide their own safety shoes, as they are mandatory in many areas of the factory.

We will do everything possible to accommodate the required programme and focus of the audit. We fully understand the importance of supplier assurance for our customers. Audits can be arranged through your Business Manager.

British Sugar Self Audit
British Sugar have established a programme to carry out self audits of our production sites, making the reports available to our customers as part of their own vendor assurance plan.

Each production site is audited annually against a predefined check list, the scope of which covers all finished sugar production & packing, including quality management, product protection and food safety due diligence. Both management system procedures and their application are examined together with a visual hygiene and housekeeping inspection. We aim to complete at least half the audits during the beet processing campaign.

Our aim is to ensure that the audits are independent, thorough and consistent and hence are carried out by a team from a different manufacturing site. The team will typically be led by one of our Senior Auditors with experience of cross-site auditing with other members of the team including an external hygiene auditor and our Quality and Food Safety Manager.

A comprehensive report is compiled and we will provide the customer with a full copy of the audit report together with any Corrective Action Requests issued.

We would respond to any points raised by customers from any of the reports. We would also envisage that customers will “shadow” on an audit every so often in order to maintain personal contact and ensure they are happy with our standard and scope of auditing.

Further information on self-auditing can be obtained from the Quality and Food Safety Manager.

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